Tag Archives: Windows

Computers

Random thought: Windows disproves Darwinism

Microsoft Windows is the unique case that disproves Darwin’s theories of natural evolution and survival of the fittest while at the same time supplying no support for the main theory opposing Darwinism, the so called Intelligent Design Theory.  It is obvious the existence of a system such as Microsoft Windows is the work of a deity.  In this case an inherently chaotic and evil one; we usually refer to it as the Devil.

Mmm… wonder if I may be able to do a thesis on that, just wonder if it should be in the religion or computer science department… 😀

Computers

Disassociating .EXE-files

Windows doesn´t work as it used to after I associated the .exe-extension to putty.exe...
Windows doesn´t work as it used to after I associated the .exe-extension to putty.exe…

I am clumsy. I can only confess. But I still think what I did should not be possible to do. I mean, it’s not like having a foundation is optional when building a house… why should running exe-files as executables be an option?

Okay, this is what I did: I have an exe-file (putty.exe) sitting on my windows start-menu (oh did I forgot to mention this was a problem in Windows? Sorry…) However, I happened to move the folder where this file was located. Not so good perhaps because now, of course, the link to putty fails.

So, I right clicked it and selected properties, trying to figure out if there was a way to redirect the link. There was… kind of… there was the “Open With” button. I thought, hey, that could be it, let’s try it and see what happens. So I clicked it, opened it and selected putty.exe. It didn’t work.

Or, well. Windows did what it thought I wanted it to do. The dialog I’ve quickly scanned before selecting a file was the dialog for reassociating the .exe extension … with putty.exe. This, however, was not in Windows liking, so now whenever I click an exe I get the dialog here to the left.

It would have been really bad if I hadn’t done one good thing that day. I installed cygwin… and weehoo… windows programs can be started from cygwin. Phew! I can tell IT-support the problem is solved… almost!

At least one good thing. The problem is rather easily solved. Let’s see if I can remember the steps the rather stressed out support technician went through. Open “My Computer”, select “View” in the the menu and go to associations in the dialog. What we want to do is associate the “Application” association (There are a number of other “Application”-associations but we never touched them… and if they haven’t been changed, don’t touch them, and if they have, I’ve no clue what extension they should have so … don’t touch them…)

Since this is a “built-in” association it won’t be in the list of associations, we have to create it again (?!). Click “New” and in the new dialog enter “EXE” as the extension and from the drop down select “Application”. Don’t push any buttons! Without having to push any buttons, but with the kind mercy of the Gods of Windows, a message that the “EXE association has been changed” will appear along with a button to reset it to the default settings. Push the “reset”-button.

And this good folks is how my problem was solved. I came a cross a few “regedit-hacks” but I wouldn’t recommend them unless this solution doesn’t work. Also, make sure to reboot after you’ve reset the association because for me assorted things like remote desktop links and some such started to get broken after a while. (Don’t ask. I have no clue why!)

Good luck and don’t experiment with your computer, naughty! You can break something for real…

Computers

Naivized by Linux

I’m all for Linux. Really. I love it, even though it’s from time to time a hate-love. However, I just realized one thing Linux has done to me that isn’t so good when you are forced to work and live in Windowsland.

I’ve become totally naive when it comes to certain aspects of the Windows world.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a program to help me keep my local hard drive synchronized (or in fact, backed up) to the network drive. A few factors have made this an issue for me, bad network performance but also the ability to just pick up your laptop and not worry about network connection to mention a few.

Anyway, I browsed around, moderately annoyed trying to avoid all the $oftware in favor for something simple that could do the job but wouldn’t cost money… just like home in Linuxland, right?

So I came a cross one really promising piece of software (no need to mention which since they’re not lone sinners :o), downloaded, tried it out and thought… hey this works! It had good integration with the desktop and a clean and simple UI and simple yet powerful features.

Great. Then today I spoke with a colleague who had been on the same mission and told him this was good software. He was rather surprised, since he had long ago figured out the software was not at all free (even though it’s listed as free software on several places, and they say it is free). The surprise will come after 30 days when the software stops working, for all intents and purposes unless you pay them money.

There’s nothing bad with companies asking for money. After all, I ask for money for working for a company, so the company should ask for money for selling my work, right? However, the serious problem is the lying part of the deal, where software companies say they are delivering free software where in fact they aren’t. In my case it ended up wasting several hours setting up the sync for real and would have wasted even more time had I been caught unaware when the 30 day trial was up. This, the lying seems, to me, to be a direct symptom of the software development model used…

There are no such thing as a free lunch, not even in the Linux world, but there you pay with time, and your apps aren’t programmed to stop work after 30 days. They might, because you’ve downloaded beta software, but that’s because some one did not program, or program right, not because someone did.

Anyway, I was baffled, totally unprepared and realized Linux naivized me! Wooh!

Computers

Hacking Windows Remote Connection (MSTSC.EXE)

WARNING: The below tip will kick out one of the already logged in users. This behavior may have been added after I came up with this advice, or I’ve always been the evil person on the block 😀

Ever been turned down by a Windows machine over Remote Desktop because it already had too many connections?

Even though there are no way to connect using the standard remote desktop program you can still “hack” a connection. Sure the limitation exists, probably to sell more licenses or to protect the host server from getting too many connections, but to get past it you do the following:

mstsc /v:myhost.com /F /console

Where myhost.com is the name or ipnumber of the server you are trying to remote to. /F means a full screen connection, /console means to connect to the “console session of the server” (whatever that means, it anyhow results in you getting in although the server would otherwise refuse you).

The full format of the MSTSC command call are:

MSTSC [<Connection File>] [/v:<server[:port]>] [/console] [/f[ullscreen]]
[/w:<width> /h:<height>]

<Connection File> refers to an rdp file to be used with the connection (good if you need to make local drivers or other resources available or set up the connection otherwise).

You can also call MSTSC with the “/edit” switch if you wish to edit a connection file:

MSTSC /edit <Connection File>

Finally you may also migrate files by using the “/migrate” switch (not 100% sure how this is done though since I don’t have an older version file to test with).

Computers

The mystery of the magic file (or how i invented the .rte and .rtg file formats)

I’m just back from a head spinning experience of extreme Windowsism.  A file that refused to be renamed, or deleted… until ten minutes later…

What happened was that I wanted to rename a file.  Like I usually do, I clicked the file, then pressed F2, got the “editable” view of the file name and started typing.

Nothing happened.

I clicked around, trying to see if the computer was just slow or something like that.  Well… the file explorer did not respond at all…

It was frozen.  So I waited for it to unfreeze.  Which it didn’t.  It apparently had crashed.

I force-quitted.  Restarted and retried.  After all, perhaps it was just a fluke?  Right?

Nope.  Same exact problem.

I scratched my head, thought for a bit and rejected a number of alternative ways to go.  I guessed it was time for the daily reboot… again today.  And rebooted the system.

Once back in the catalogue (five minutes later) I found the same problem persisted.  No rename, no file explorer, nothing but kill the program.

I was able to “solve” the problem however, by copying the file.  Once I had it was in fact possible to rename the copy.  All I had to do now was to remove the old file and, although kind of axy (as in trying to carve an inch high wooden statuette with an axe), the problem would be solved.

The file did not want to be deleted.  However, the file explorer did not freeze this time so chalk one up for windows?  Or not.  Shutting down the file explorer and restarting it did not help either.  It was time to harvest the vast experience of the firm.

I asked around in the office landscape trying to find someone that could help, and I got a number of helpful advice like “have you restarted the file explorer?” or “have you rebooted the machine?”  All of which was rather not what I hadn’t already tried.

Finally someone suggested: “put two files in the same folder where the problematic file is placed, name them so they appear just above and just below the file with the problem, put something like ‘erase me’ at the end of them, wait a week and delete the file then.”

After having hyperventilated for a while to get the whole concept into my head and make it stick long enough to do what the guy had suggested I went ahead.

My magic file was named something like “My document 2.rtf” so after some experimenting with names that would place the file exactly where I wanted them I came up with:

My document 2.rte.delete.me.txt
My document 2.rtf
My document 2.rtg.delete.me.txt

Now for the mind blowing finale.

Once I had the files in place my folder looked like:

My document 2.rte.delete.me.txt
My document 2.rtg.delete.me.txt

The magic file had disappeared!  Finally deleted!!  Only about ten minutes after the button was pressed!!!

That was when I noticed the dialogue boxes saying “The file cannot be renamed, it has disappeared.”  They were, in true windows style hidden under the file explorer window…

Aha, was my first thought, problem solved…  Then I felt a chill going down my spine.  Didn’t I try to rename before I deleted?  Or did I try to delete first and rename later?

No! my mind screamed.  I had a file, whose content was important but whose name was wrong.  So deleting before renaming would be stupid.  And renaming after I’d copied the file and renamed the copy would be equally stupid (not to mention impossible… there was already a file with that name…)

Somehow windows had confused the order of the operations?!  BRRRRR!!!

You might think, hey he was working with a networked drive and the net was having some kind of problem or the order of the packages got confused.  It’s a good idea, it could really happen, even though I think the Samba protocol (or whatever windows have chosen to call it) should be able to handle packages coming in haphazardly without getting confused like this, and the most probable result of Samba not managing that should be some kind of failure, even total failure demanding the drive to be remounted (or a blue screen or whatever XP uses when the OS-programmers run out of money, time or happiness).

Enough about networked drives… the drive in question was local!  No network, no delays, not even cables (USB/FIREWIRE/eSATA or what have you)… unless you count the system bus.  Does windows use TCP/IP on the system bus?

Well… thank God I have my important files on another OS altogether!  Not to mention on RAID and USB backup…

Computers are scary… Windows computers are terrifying!